they thrive in the shadows, spies, secret agents. >> if i come over there with some money, can you pick me up from london. a cool englishman who drove hot cars.

he was a real james bond. he started to tell me about undercover investigative work for the government. >> he was the man of her dreams and and she was ready to join him on secret missions. >> you were going to be mr. and mrs. james bond. >> reporter: like 07, he had more than one bond girl in his life. >> with him everything was exciting. >> reporter: studly he disappeared, taking this woman, launching a manhunt across three countries and sending a desperate mother on a secret dangerous mission of her own. >> nobody messes with my kids. in this hour of "the spy who loved her." robert was sly, sophisticated. >> he enjoyed the finer things in life. >> so what's a young woman from iowa to do when she tumbled hard for an international spy? you had fallen in love with him? >> i had. >> the man's schoolteacher kim adams fell for was a british

agent, made famous by movies like "gold finger." and like the bond girls on screen, she became embroiled in an international spy story, involving russian submarines, irish terrorism and an al qaeda plot to blow up a passenger jet. but after kim herself was abducted, it would take a gutty secret admission by her own mother to save the day. >> in order to get my daughter back, i had to do it. >> the story begins a few years back. kim was a single mom, a school counselor living in minneapolis. after her teenager son moved in with his father to attend a better school, kim, now empty nested, could finally scratch her itch for wonder. >> i had always wanted to live abroad. it was great. >> london was her destination. with her phd credentials, kim arranged for a job as a train

psychologist, counseling kids in the busch withes. >> i twoebt my local car dealership. >> who guessed your life could change in a used carer lot. that the debonair 30-year-old salesman there would turn out to be the one. >> robert sort of swooped in and shooked my hand and introduced himself. when i met him i remember thinking he has the most honest eyes. >> robert sold kim a car and his after sales service calls became personal heart to hearts. after a few months he asked kim out on a date. dinner in london's exclusive park lane. >> he was very attentive. he enjoyed the finer things in life. >> more dates followed. drives through the english countryside. easy times. but as sauf as he was, kim says

there was something nagging about robert, something secret. like his cell phones. had four or five of them, though she often found it hard to reach him. frustrating and the funny business about cameras. he didn't like having his picture taken. jobs, this new man in her life changed them as often as the fast cars he drove. top of the line bmws and audis with duran, duran, pumping through the speakers. kim began to probe. >> when did he start to confide in you he was not just a used car salesman but a secret agent. >> he started to tell me, in little bits and piece about under cover investigations for the government. >> james bond stuff. >> some of it was terrorism, some crime rings.

not like he sat me down and said, oh, by the way, i'm a spy. it seemed like very difficult, gritty, unpleasant work. >> kim grew closer to robert, the man of secrets, despite her promise to herself that she wasn't going to get involved in a heavy relationship, not right then. so when did this change? >> i started to realize i was falling in love with him. >> against all of your rational wishes. >> absolutely. >> robert moved in with kim. >> he was charming. very complimentary to my daughter. >> reporter: kim's mom anne wanted to meet her daughter's interesting new boyfriend so she flew to london. >> you could see the attraction? >> i could, yes. he seemed to know how to talk to each person so they felt very special. >> reporter: six months after their first date, a year after kim bought that car from robert, the couple cruised to sun kissed

spain where robert proposed. >> you were not looking for a husband and said will you marry me? >> yes. >> reporter: another unexpected twist in store. robert told her he had been offered an important lucrative position in the global spy game. >> he talked about a job at a light house which was some sort of communications station really. >> reporter: in a remote part of scotland there was a light house and robert told kim that is where they would be gaerting intelligence together, monitoring russian submarines. they sent dispatches to spy masters in london. >> you are going to be mr. and mrs. james bond living in a light house somewhere. >> yeah, living in a light house. >> her parents divorced and both are now remarried. she called her dad to tell her about her serious live in boyfriend. >> i told everybody my daughter was marrying james bond. >> kim was shaken but not

stirred by keeping vigil at a december late light house. she told her dad the money was good, $170,000 a year. he was skeptical. >> amay be a farm from iowa who has stupid tattooed on his forehead but they don't pay anybody thousands of dollars to turn on a light in a light house. i said do i have stupid tattooed up here? >> reporter: after he happened to see a documentary about russian submarines and talked to his daughter on the phone, he came around. >> proud of you. never had a spy in the family. >> oh, shush. >> reporter: kim found it natural when robert said she would have to go through strenuous training. first of all forget being called kim adams. she would be given a new identity at spy school, assuming they didn't uncover any skeletons in her background check. she was about to be married to a spy an the secret services that

employed him. they found an ideal spot for the wedding. kim's mom and dad would be coming over but a week before the ceremony, kim's father john got an urgent call from his perspective son-in-law. >> hi, john, how are you doing? >> pretty good. >> he said we're going to postpone the wedding. >> reporter: robert said intelligence analysts had picked up disturbing analyst chatter. >> he said i know there is going to be another 9/11 take place, another plane will be attempted to go down and i don't want that to happen to kim's family. >> days later, the chatter seemed to be confirmed in a story on the news. >> the narrow miss on 582. >> terrorists armed with shoulder fire missiles had barely missed a take down. and two days before the wedding date.

robert had been right after all. maybe it was too risky for kim's family to fly to london. then, before the couple could set a new wedding date, those detailed background checks on kim, turned up a road bloc block to happily ever after living as spies in a top secret light house. >> i had student loans that needed to be paid off and robert told me because of the security clearance he had he couldn't carry unsecured debt. neither could anyone his immediate household because it would put him at risk for bribery. >> reporter: robert was strapped if they are kind of cash they needed to retire the loan. so kim called her parents in the state. >> you started to hit on them for $35,000. >> that seemed like an unbelievable amount of money to me. i have never borrowed money from my parents. >> reporter: her parents wired $35,000 to london. robert told kim the money would be deposited in a secret agent's account and the student loan paid off.

not long after the cash transfer, a shocking, unexpected twist. kim adams mysteriously vanished, gone without a trace. >> i was almost panic stricken. i didn't know what to do. we didn't know where she was. we didn't know if he was okay. we couldn't get an answer. >> reporter: coming up, the search for kim adams and her mysterious fiance. >> something that was truly stranger than life that turned out to be quite true, quite real and quite dangerous. almost tastes like one of jack's cereals.

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and started earning loads of points. you got a weather balloon with points? yes i did. [ man ] points i could use for just about anything. ♪ ♪ there it is. [ man ] so i used mine to get a whole new perspective. ♪ [ male announcer ] the new citi thankyou premier card gives you more ways to earn points. what's your story? citi can help you write it. kim adams had dropped off the map after handing a $35,000 check from her parents to her fiance. before she disappeared, kim saw no reason to doubt her fiance, a man who was now digging into her past. >> we had the normal couple of arguments but nothing serious.

>> but if she'd done her own background check on him, she'd have unhappily discovered that her double-o had a long string of bond girls. some of them ex, many of them not. one of them, like kim, had met robert at the same car lot a full year before kim moved to england. the two girlfriends, the current and the ex, strangers to one another, would be joined in a twisted warp of fate neither could imagine. >> he, i think, was waiting for me because he was hanging around, well, lurking around more like. >> caroline cooper, a lawyer for an insurance company, wasn't in the market for a car or for the glib salesman she passed every day walking to work but one day she stopped to banter with the car dealer and was pulled in by his sob story about a painful breakup. >> i thought, good grief, a man able to talk about emotion. >> so a second impression of who this guy was? >> like he was very -- easy to talk to. >> good humored guy. >> yeah, he was actually.

he was quite, quite funny as well in a way. >> mysterious, too. and it wasn't long before robert the car salesman was hinting at that double life as a double-o. >> he is more interesting than mr. car salesman. >> did you think that was kind of intriguing? >> exactly, i thought it was intriguing. i couldn't understand why he had this money and then he started talking about all these eccentric cars he had, bmws, and aston martins. this is a guy that is definitely out to impress. >> and impress he did. caroline invited him back to her home, and into her life. >> he started taking me away for weekends. but we'd always go to very expensive places. it's kind of like, well this is a bit better than staying at home. and this is fun. it was the and venture. it was just so exciting being with him. you were never bored. >> there were big ticket vacations in portugal and rio. >> he was a good dancer and i loved dancing. >> robert moved in with the lawyer caroline six months after they'd met.

and used his cover as a salesman to swing car lot deals for her. robert assured caroline if she bought a sporty vw for her sister and one for herself too, he'd get her a good price for her old mercedes. caroline handed over about $40,000. because the couple were now making plans to get married she didn't think to ask about the mercedes. so it came as something of a shock when she asked her fiance about it weeks later. >> he says, well, it's sold. didn't i tell you? bear in mind this is somebody i see every day. i said, no, you didn't tell me. where's the money? how much did you get for it and where is the money? oh, 16 grand and the money is in my account. in your account? what's it doing in your account? it should be in my account. >> robert told caroline his secret agent bank would allow him to give her just $8,000 and he'd return the rest another time. but after that little eye opener caroline decided to try to find out more about the mysterious life of this man she was about to marry. was he really who he said he

was? you became the investigator, caroline, didn't you? >> i had to be. because nobody else was doing it, were they? >> caroline demanded references. names and phone numbers of people in robert's past who would vouch for him, including the parents of a girl robert once knew. >> transpired that he had used their daughter alison's credit card all over the place and run up a huge bill. >> this is a familiar story to you, isn't it? >> this is a familiar story to you, isn't it? >> he then followed her one day and then was wanted for theft and attempted kidnapping. so that's reference number one. not doing too brilliantly. >> the next reference was robert's half-sister. >> she says to me, god, i hate my brother. he and my mother had a very strange relationship. she said it was almost incestuous. >> two people are telling you this guy's absolute poison. >> and i'm saying, look, robert these references aren't going too well. because we've not only got incest but we've got attempted kidnap and theft of money. >> reporter: caroline's amateur detective work even led to a man in rural england with a really

strange robert story. the man said his daughter sara had been living in fear of irish terrorists for ten years and he had paid robert about $500,000 to keep her in a safe house. >> i couldn't mentally take it on board. excuse me? why did this person not speak to anybody for ten years? you know, it doesn't make any sense to me. >> and robert was, after all, a secret agent. so maybe shady money deals were part of his cover. but even after caroline turned up these hair-raising stories, her doubts about robert were no match for his velvety charm. he still had possibilities of being a couple with you? >> i'm thinking maybe women are good at this, maybe i'll be the one to save him. maybe i'll save him. maybe he'll lead a life -- his whole life is going to change because of me. >> but after robert discovered the password to caroline's internet bank account, and transferred $25,000 of her money to his own account, she'd had it with him. >> so then i called the police. and i said, look, i know this is

going to sound really, really stupid. but i got involved with this chap who works at the guard at the end of the road who told me that he's done some kind of undercover secret activity at this point, this knowing smile breaks over his face, and i'm thinking, god, this is just so embarrassing. and i said, but now he disappeared. i've got no car. i've got no money. >> coming up, caroline's phone call helps uncover the secrets of her secret agent. will it lead police to now missing american kim adams? [ male announcer ] get ready for the left lane. the volkswagen autobahn for all event is back. right now, get a great deal on new volkswagen models, including the jetta, awarded a top safety pick by the iihs. that's the power of german engineering. hurry in and lease the jetta s for just $179 a month.

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she called the cops. initially the police treated caroline as a naive woman with a bad eye for men. but months later, one officer promised he would get to the bottom of this mysterious secret agent persona.

in short order, the cop learned that he had a new bond girl to replace caroline, kim adams the american school psychologist. but there was no way to question him. both him and his girlfriend kim were missing, vanished. >> it was a once in a lifetime, once in a career. >> jackie is a 20-year veteran of the fbi, a special agent stationed in london. she was sitting at her desk when she got a call from a british police colleague about a missing american. >> what i'm going to tell you will be impossible to believe, he said but you have to believe it. >> the specific thing scotland yard was asking you to do was what. >> to find out everything about kimberly adams, her disappearance and they are relationship with him. >> she began to investigate and what she found out did seem impossible to believe. >> the story is she was training to become an mi-5 operative with

mr. freeguard who was also a spy. >> they are counterpart of the cia? >> yes. the two were training to man a light house in scotland and be on the lookout for enemy submarines. >> james bond work? >> james bond work, absolutely. >> reporter: but problem, the agency that employs the real james bond, the british secret service had never heard of robert freegargd. his story didn't check out and soon the british cop suspected the missing american woman had been kidnapped by him. and that's when they turned to the fbi for help and when the agent discovered creepy details about his past, the case became a matter of life and death. but before the agent could pick up a scent of the missing kim adams she would discover an astonishing story of deceit, terror and viciousness. the trail began ten years before

in 1993. he was a barman. pulling pints at a pub near an agricultural college in rural england. he'd befriended three regulars there, college students, and confided to them that he was, in fact, an undercover investigator rooting out a cell of irish terrorists on campus. so he was working as a barman and he's telling them on the side, you know, i'm pulling a pint here but i'm really looking for i.r.a. guys. >> i'm looking for i.r.a. guys at the agricultural college. >> so this job as barman is simply cover. >> exactly. >> and they didn't laugh him out of the pub? >> not these three students. >> the agent discovered freegard even enlisted this man, one of the students, to work on the undercover mission. and devised brutal training for him. he blindfolded his apprentice, sat him in a chair and beat him up repeatedly saying are you tough enough to be mi-5? to be a spy, huh? >> precisely. >> then quite suddenly freegard told the students his undercover unit had been made by the i.r.a., that they were all in grave danger.

and they should immediately flee with him for their lives. >> they left college. they never graduated. they went on the road with him to various, as he put them, safe houses where he could protect them. >> protect them and control them. >> controlling where they slept, what they ate, what they did during the day, who they spoke with. >> robert told what were by now his captives that he needed cash to set up fake businesses and new identities for them. >> and these particular students came from wealthy farming families. their parents had to pay to protect their children because of their exposure to the i.r.a. >> and pay, they did. weeks turned into months and then years as the students dutifully paid robert freegard more than a million dollars to hide them from the i.r.a. and while they were stashed away in small rooms, living on greasy fish and chips, freegard was moving on up. he drove snazzy new cars, dressed in designer suits and jetted off to exotic

destinations on vacation. it was clear to the fbi agent hunting robert freegard and kim adams that the students who eventually escaped their captor had been bamboozled in the most cruel fashion. fleeing the irish terrorists, the beatings, the miserable safe houses, vast sums of money were all part of a big hoax. robert freegard was not an undercover cop, a spy or a secret agent. he was a con man, a brilliant one. >> freegard was someone that did not complete his secondary education. tried his hand at becoming a carpenter, a barman, very little personal success in his life. >> and the fbi agent discovered the con man had used his velvety charm on a string of other victims, all women, including a lawyer caroline cooper, another, a company executive, even a woman who had been married just a few months. all accomplished women, all ensnared.

and now kim adams was caught in his web, too. >> as he was with one woman, the other five women or so that he had secreted around the uk would still be funding his adventures by working menial jobs. >> this guy had to have more than special cologne. what did he wield over his female victims? >> it was a combination of charm woven with threats of violence, threats of death. >> they could have walked away. >> by the time they got to that point, i don't think they had the power to walk away. >> but what did all those years of scams and sadistic cruelty at the hands of a phony secret agent spell for the missing american kim adams, a psychologist with a ph.d.? you have to be thinking, how could this woman have bought this package? >> he was a master. >> coming up, how to catch a con man. >> all of the traditional means that the fbi would use or knew scotland yard would use to track someone, all that proved fruitless.

>> the fbi turns kim's own mom into a secret agent. >> i knew that if this didn't work, it was all over.

here's what is happening. the white house is insisting on a deal to raise the debt ceiling through 2013 but house speaker john boehner wants a shorter deal. they are scrambling to put together an agreement before asian markets open later today. anders behring breivik allegedly wrote a manifesto about his bazaar for a revolution. anders behring breivik is due in court tomorrow. more news later. i'm alex witt. see you then. american psychologist kim adams moved to london looking for change. she needed a set of wheels to get around so she went to a nearby car lot, and while she picked out a car, she got picked

up by the salesman. but as their relationship grew, this mysterious salesman liked fast cars and the finer things in life disclosed that he was no salesman, he was, in fact, a government secret agent. he proposed. she accepted. but then trouble. they dropped off the map. was it a kidnapping? it was now up to fbi agent jackie zappacosta to pick up kim's trail. where to look? >> all of the traditional means that the fbi would use or new scotland yard would track someone, all that proved fruitless. >> no credit cards? >> no credit cards. no hard line telephone. no permanent address, no mail drop. nothing. >> so he's a pretty clever guy? >> he's a very clever guy. he was invisible to law enforcement. >> by now the fbi and british authorities knew freegard was no james bond. and jackie zappacosta was beginning to piece together a profile of the man she was tracking. unfortunately for kim adams, it was becoming clear to the

authorities that she was trapped in an intricate web of mind games. >> given that we all have vulnerabilities and we all have weaknesses, i think he was particularly adept at zeroing in on what they were. >> is this what we've come to learn is stockholm syndrome. victims come totally under the sway of their abductor? >> i would say it could be used as a case example, yes. >> kim had paid freegard $35,000 for spy school training, thinking she would marry him and join him in a life of international espionage, spying on russian submarines from a lighthouse. freegard in turn pretended to conduct his own background checks on her threatening kim with brutal war stories from the spy game, all made up, of course. >> he said he had witnessed a knee-capping. >> where a suspect was shot through the kneecap? >> yes. he reported being present when two men held another man down and drilled a drill through his head. >> did he tell you then that he'd killed people before and he could do it again?

>> he told me that somebody had discovered his identity, and it was either kill or be killed himself. he told me that he put a nail gun to the guy's head and killed him. >> kim didn't know those were just stories, but then she discovered how terrifying robert could be. it happened when he started grilling her with personal questions, love life stuff. information supposedly his superiors had to have before they could clear her for spying. >> any skeletons in the closet? he said, i don't care what it is, it doesn't matter to me. i just don't want to go into that meeting and be surprised. >> kim sheepishly confessed when she first started dating robert, he wasn't the only guy in her life. >> and how did he take that news? >> not well. not well at all. >> went ballistic on you? >> mm-hmm. >> had you ever seen that side of him? >> never. >> volcanically angry, robert made a call, apparently to some secret operatives with, he said, fatal results. >> he told me that the man that

i had been seeing, that his associates had picked him up and beaten him to death. >> this man you allegedly had been cheating on him with. >> yes. >> was now dead? >> yes. and that it was my fault. >> even as a psychology ph.d. kim was unprepared for robert's psychotic behavior, and she was already in too deep. kim, this is an excellent time to say, i'm out of here. >> i thought i was to blame. i thought i was responsible. >> kim wanted to get the relationship back on track, undo whatever her perceived failure had been, anything to appease robert. kim, was that the moment do you think where you slipped into his control? >> yes. >> how did he get you? >> certainly threats and fear and guilt, and i was in love with him. >> you were still in love with him at that point? >> i loved him as much as i hated him. scared to death of him. >> after freegard went nuts on her, he called the wedding off, and that's when kim disappeared from friends and family. freegard ordered her to leave her school counseling job and

moved her to a secluded rural cottage where she was now both trapped and terrified, bewildered by her exposure to the evil side of a man she'd fallen in love with. >> my reality was making sure robert wasn't upset. i certainly thought about my family, thought about my friends, thought about the job that i had left, but it was distant. it wasn't part of my world anymore. >> he'd messed with your brains? >> mm-hmm. you know independent thought or free will was nearly gone. if i had left, i knew he would always be able to find me and that he would kill me. >> did he threaten you? >> yes. >> said he'd kill you? >> yes. >> he controlled every aspect of her life. moving her from her london flat to his mother's home in the countryside. once frequent transatlantic calls to her mother were now few and far between. >> when i went to live with

robert's mother, i was only allowed to call her, you know, when he was there, which was maybe once a week. >> he would give you his -- >> cell phone. >> cell phone to call her? >> mm-hmm. >> were you thinking less about your mother? was she feeling like a distant earlier part of your life or -- >> no, it was -- i just didn't have anything to talk about. i mean, i spent my days doing absolutely nothing, so what -- what is there to talk about? >> robert even took a shovel and dug a hole he said might become kim's grave. >> i was at the lowest depths of clinical depression. there were some days i couldn't necessarily get out of bed. i cried every day, every single day. >> did you ever think about killing him? >> no. i thought about killing myself. >> fbi agent jackie zappacosta didn't know how bad things had gotten for kim adams but knew kim was in trouble.

to catch freegard she decided on a bold, ingenious scheme. a plan perhaps only a mother could carry out. >> i was just so afraid. i was afraid for my daughter. i was afraid -- i knew that if this didn't work, it was all over. >> coming up, springing the trap, an intense meeting that could mean life or death. >> i was almost physically sick. . in here, the planned combination of at&t and t-mobile would deliver our next generation mobile broadband experience to 55 million more americans, many in small towns and rural communities, giving them a new choice. we'll deliver better service, with thousands of new cell sites... for greater access to all the things you want, whenever you want them. it's the at&t network... and what's possible in here is almost impossible to say.

london-based fbi agent jackie zappacosta knew that robert freegard had never been a spy. knew that he had a ten-year trail of victims who had turned over tons of money to him, knew that he was out there on the run somewhere with the american school psychologist kim adams, gone now for three months as her investigation began, but freegard was so clever, he had left no footprints.

the trail was cold and so the agent had fbi agents in the states contact kim's parents to see if they knew where their daughter and robert were. >> when the fbi called up her father the first time he hung up on them. >> mr. freegard had instructed kimberly's father by saying you know, you're going to be called one day by someone who claims to be the fbi. and they're going to tell you that i'm not a spy. and that's a test. >> dad hangs up and thought he passed the test. >> yes. he reached out that far. he was that good. >> as far as kim's parents knew their daughter was still about to marry robert. but after the fbi convinced them that kim, they, too, were victims of a dangerous con artist, they were only too eager to help find their daughter and get evidence that would put freegard away. >> bediscussed scenarios. we planned scenarios.

we planned strategies. >> strategies stretching over a six-week period that involved coaching kim's mom and dad in how to elicit information should their daughter or robert call. >> it had to be their words as they would talk to their daughter, questions that they would normally ask their daughter because freegard was a formidable opponent. he would sense if something was amiss. >> the trap was set. jackie just needed skim to call home. any calls would be secretly recorded by fbi agents in the u.s. a few days later, jackie got her lucky break. freegard and kim had run out of cash. freegard, with kim under his control, had placed a series of calls to kim's parents concocting a story that the two needed still more money to pay for spy school. >> you have put up some of your money and some of kim's money to whoever it is that's giving you these tests, right? >> i fronted $61,000, cause that's all i could put my hands on.

and i don't have any more money than that, john. that wiped me out. >> so the reason they're calling home to the states is to get money. >> yes. we knew if we didn't capitalize on that break that we may not hear from kimberly again for a long time. after the fbi and british police determined that freegard and kim had traveled to france, out of their jurisdiction, they set up a plan that kim's schoolteacher mom would execute. you had to learn how to become something of a little spy yourself. >> well, i guess i did, yes. i hadn't thought of it that way. >> back home in phoenix, ann's instructions were to use the sporadic phone calls to lure robert and her daughter back to england. >> hi, ann, how are you doing? >> a plan was set with tempting bait. kim's mom would give them a check for $20,000 but only if she could deliver it herself in london. she was even given a script by the fbi to deal with curveballs as when robert cleverly suggested that kim's mom fly to france with the money instead. >> the fbi said, you can't do that because we can't go to france and arrest him. you've got to get him back to the uk.

>> anyway, the reason i called, is that i've never been to heathrow before, so -- >> while we were scripting against him, he had a script for kimberly about how to get money from her parents. >> i don't know where to begin. i told you about the exam. >> yep. >> basically we have to tell them at the end of the day today that we have the money, because i have to give it to them tomorrow. >> so it was a battle of wills and a battle of scripts. >> ann was insistent that robert and her daughter come to london to get the money. >> so they finally agreed that, yes, they would come to pick me up in the uk. but we didn't know if it would be just robert, just kim, kim and robert, a third party or nobody. >> a no-show. >> a no-show. >> and so it was a nervous and very uncertain ann hodgins who set out from phoenix on her own secret agent-style mission. >> i was almost physically sick. i was so afraid. i was afraid for my daughter. i was afraid. i knew that if this didn't work, it was all over. we'd never get her back.

>> were you worried about blowing this, not being able to pull it off? >> oh, yes, oh, absolutely. >> and before the mission started it was nearly stalled. ann hodgins, schoolteacher by day, arrived to the airport on time to catch her transatlantic flight, but she was greeted with a problem all too common to most of us. to this nervous mother, it seemed like a matter of life and death. i'm on this flight and the agent is saying, no, you're not. >> exactly. and i was trying to be calm. but by then i'm almost in a panic, because i have to be on that flight. i have to be. if i'm not on that flight, this isn't going to work. >> did you have the fbi agents with you. >> oh, no. >> working on the rough spots. >> i was on my own. i was in contact with them on the phone and trust me, i did call them, yes, i called them immediately and i'll admit i wasn't calm at that point. i think it was more this i can't get on the plane! >> but eventually ann did get on the plane. and if her nerves weren't frayed already. well, we couldn't make this one up. >> we took off and they started the in-flight movie.

and i sat there thinking, i can't even tell anyone because they won't believe me. >> as mother flew across the atlantic to rescue daughter from a real-life con man, dire situation by any stretch, the in-flight movie began to play. what was the film? >> "catch me if you can." >> i'd like to cash this check here and then i'd like to take you out for a steak dinner. >> leonardo dicaprio was the con man. >> exactly. of all the millions of movies out there. so i'm sitting there thinking, okay, now, do i cry, do i laugh? do i shake my head and say, wake up, wake up? >> it is pretty funny. >> it's funny. >> but the flight did land in london on time where ann met fbi agent jackie zappacosta, who briefed her on a sting operation the british police had set up for the following morning back at the airport. british undercover cops and fbi would be watching ann's every move as she pretended to enter

the arrivals hall just off a flight from the states. robert had suggested a coffee shop just past customs where they could meet. you guys have got to be a little bit nervous backstage here, right? >> you're always nervous backstage. >> the next day kim's mom emerged in the arrivals area just as scripted. robert was there. her daughter wasn't. >> i walked up to him and i said, robert, and he said, oh, how are you? we hugged. and then i said, oh, where's kim? and he told me she was in the car park. >> this is a wrinkle in the plan. >> so i made an excuse, a long trip, i need to use the restroom. so i went into the restroom, pulled out the cell phone, called the agents and said, kim is in the car park. i don't know where. and they said okay, go, go, go. >> ann went with robert to the parking lot, with no idea what would happen next. >> so i got up to the car and kim jumped out. we hugged, talked just a bit. robert put my suitcase in the back and from every corner of that parking ramp cars and agents pulled up.

once all the screeching tires stopped, the agent who was in charge of the investigation said, robert hendy freegard, you are under arrest. >> kim, of course, doesn't know what's going on. >> she burst into tears. >> i was crying hysterically. i just kept repeating, i don't understand. i don't understand what's going on here. >> at time i am thinking what have i done. is she crying because we saved her. is she crying because the whole thing maybe isn't really what it seems and i just destroyed this relationship? will she speak to me again? i didn't know. i didn't know. >> at a nearby london police station, british police and the fbi spelled out the whole extraordinary story of robert's crimes to a dazed kim. >> based on your investigation, how many people, how many years, how much money? >> eight victims, ten years, between $1 million and $2 million. >> money was the game? >> money was the game. and power was the game. >> freegard was in custody

facing charges if he were convicted could send him to prison for life. so now it was kim's turn to fill in critical details of her four-month abduction. information used to prosecute freegard. it was a harrowing story about the spy who not only conned her, but threatened to kill her too. >> he told me i would be tortured and when dawn came i would be begging to be killed. >> coming up -- how many women had this con man duped? >> some still believe they were in love with him. >> unravelled the mystery, robert freegard on trial. ce as . we're putting them to the test against the speed of a rescue unit. go ! they're downloading a music album. the first network to finish gets rescued. does your phone know that we're racing ? done ! verizon's done ! i've got seven left !

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when robert freegard was apprehended at london's heathrow airport, the fbi agent who broken open the case said most of visit victims were yet to

find out they had been played as fools. >> he'd been to the point where as to the police put the pieces of the puzzle together and figured out where all these other women were living that the women still could not believe that mr. freegard was not coming back. >> they still believed he was a spy? >> yes. >> and they still believed in him? >> they still believed in him, still believed he was in a position of power, still believed he was dangerous, and some of them still believed they were in love with him. >> agent, how rare and dangerous is this quality? >> i hope i never see it again. and it was the first time i had encountered someone of that level in my career. >> one of freegard's most malicious achievements was getting two women he was ripping off to live under the same roof for three months instructing one to never speak english, both unaware the other was ensnared in freegard's net. the victims seem to be anybody you'd run into anywhere in your daily routes, huh?

>> anyone that i would run into, anyone that i would have lunch with, anyone that i might be friends with. >> was it a perfect fraud? >> it was a perfect fraud for many years. but he made mistakes. >> during the course of 18 months, more than 100 prosecution witnesses presented evidence against freegard here at a london court. many of his victims still terrified of him testifying from behind a screen and then freegard himself took the stand. >> essentially he denied everything, no admissions, none. this was all a big mistake. >> was he putting out this whole james bond story to them? >> no, that was a mistake too. >> the jury ended up finding freegard guilty of theft, kidnapping and making threats to kim. the judge sentenced him to at least nine years in prison. so the international man of mystery, the british con man who

so cruelly exploited women was finally brought to the ground himself by a group of women. the ex who was left in debt, the mother who became a little bit double o to save her daughter from the spy who didn't love her and the real agent, jackie zappacosta. in the end did gender matter? was this winning one for the female side? >> after it was all over, there was sweet satisfaction when we put all of the pieces of the puzzle together. >> that women with resolve finally put him out of business? >> women with resolve took him out in six weeks, yes. caroline cooper, a lawyer by trade, knew she smelled something fishy with her mysterious boyfriend and by placing a call to authorities ignited a naunt ultimately may have saved the life of american kim adams. >> i think i was quite a big fish for him but i was just the wrong person for him to take on because i was -- i couldn't be

treated in a way that the others were and he had to change his tactics with me the whole way down the line and that was hard for him. and that was his downfall ultimately. >> back in minnesota, kim adams is trying to understand what happened to her. you are a doctor of psychology. you understand the intricksies of the brain. does the psychologist in you wonder what happened to you psychologically? >>. >> it has certainly been an experience that has brought home what you read about in text books. >> are you a textbook case example of something? >> yes, of, you know brainwashing, the abused spouse. >> did you at one time wonder how people could put themselves in such awful circumstances? >> no. but i can't say that i fully viscerally understood what it was like not to be able to leave.

and i do now. >> with that understanding she is trying to rebuild her life. but the fear still lingers. >> i am scared to death of him. >> scared to death and with reason. because four years after freegard's conviction there was a creepy twist of fate. after the british appeals court decided there wasn't proof his victims were deprived of liberty or free will. freegard won his appeal on the kidnapping charges and was released from prison in may of 2009. >> with are you worried about your own safety? >> yes safety >> that he would seek you out? >> yes. >> are you a different person snow. >> i will never be the same. >> not after the spy who never loved her, who took her heart, her money, and much more.